RIM Makes BIS 4.1 Features Official – New Process for Selling Old BlackBerrys

We have already heard about the BIS 4.1 rollout a few times unofficially and now we have the official specs from RIM thanks to their knowledge base. Nothing really new to see here its just nice to see it confirmed since the launch dates are rumored for Asia Pacific on Sept 10th, Europe on Sept 23rd, and North America on October 11th. RIM also points out that a change in how BIS is setup for BlackBerry OS 7 devices requires you to perform a different process when you sell or give you device to another person.

It used to be if you changed SIM cards then you BIS email would stop being delivered. As of OS 7.0 you now need to wipe the device for that to happen or else another person will continue getting your email since the BlackBerry ID is assigned to the device not the SIM card. Check out the details here.

Here is the official specs for BIS 4.1 from RIM:

New Features of BlackBerry Internet Service 4.1

The BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) is designed to provide BlackBerry smartphone users with access to email messaging, instant messaging, Internet browsing, and more. BlackBerry Internet Service subscribers can receive automatic delivery of email messages from up to ten email accounts on their BlackBerry smartphones. The following is a list of new features being introduced with BlackBerry Internet Service 4.1: Improved large email and native attachment support

download attachments in their original format that are up to 8MB in size

view up to 300KB in an HTML email message

No interruption to email flow on SIM swap

Subscribers who insert a new SIM card in to their BlackBerry smartphone, including SIM cards from a different wireless service provider, no longer experience email flow interruptions. The BlackBerry Internet Service only stops sending email to a smartphone when the subscriber deletes all data from the smartphone, not when a new SIM card is inserted in to the smartphone.

Due to this change, before selling a smartphone, subscribers must delete all data from the smartphone (security wipe) to protect personal information, including email messages and synchronized contacts and calendar events. For more information on performing a security wipe, please see KB28225.

Note: This functionality will be available when BlackBerry Internet Service 4.1 is released in all regions.

Inbox priming for new account integrations

When a subscriber adds an email address to a smartphone, the inbox on the subscriber’s smartphone is pre-populated with up to 20 existing email messages from the email account.

Additional language support

Latvian and Lithuanian are supported by the BlackBerry Internet Service. Emails received in these languages can now be viewed on BlackBerry smartphones.

The link does say that it is for 7.0 or Higher devices… QNX though is still in it’s infancy as like Playbook 2.0 update coming shortly… Will QNX superphones be running 8.0 or run 2.3 for QNX? Anybody’s guess…